To see what's happening to the trend of public funding costs, we try to remove cyclical fluctuations (which also removes the impact of most monetary policy actions) by looking at forward interest rates.

What the "stagnationists" seem to forget or ignore is that over the last 30 years the federal government has been dramatically underinvesting in research and development. The U.S. ranks just eighth among OECD countries in R&D as a share of GDP.